CCafe
Active member
If you haven't heard in the news there’s a coffeehouse in El Paso having trouble with Starbucks patrons using their free wireless (Jamocha's) in Starbucks store. Here's the original story post http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=3937525.
I'm not ranting about this but rather offering a better alternative to this. The simplest way but not the cheapest, is to change the antenna type. Most wireless routers come with a rubber duck omni directional antenna. Removing this and mounting a directional antenna plus one that has a smaller dB rating will help eliminate pushing signal outside the building. From my understanding there is also filters that can be used to drop the signal strength of the antenna there by reducing its broadcast diameter.
The idea here is simply tune your network so only your store is in the broadcast zone of the wireless device. It still may not be 100% effective but in Jamocha’s case I believe it would hinder the signal from ever reaching Starbucks. In the long run it might be even cheaper, depending on how bad the situation gets and if the courts were to get involved.
I'm not ranting about this but rather offering a better alternative to this. The simplest way but not the cheapest, is to change the antenna type. Most wireless routers come with a rubber duck omni directional antenna. Removing this and mounting a directional antenna plus one that has a smaller dB rating will help eliminate pushing signal outside the building. From my understanding there is also filters that can be used to drop the signal strength of the antenna there by reducing its broadcast diameter.
The idea here is simply tune your network so only your store is in the broadcast zone of the wireless device. It still may not be 100% effective but in Jamocha’s case I believe it would hinder the signal from ever reaching Starbucks. In the long run it might be even cheaper, depending on how bad the situation gets and if the courts were to get involved.
